Book Review: Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit by Vandana Shiva
In her book, “Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit”, author Vandana Shiva talks about the ills of pollution and privatization of water created by the global commodification of this natural resource. Through her book she explores important issues surrounding water including inequitable access, conflicts between local communities, states and private corporations, climate change, pollution, and irrigation/farming. She insists on a democratic, community managed water market rather than the capitalistic control for water-conservation and water-sharing.
A physicist, author and an activist, Shiva Vandana presents her case with valid and sometimes controversial arguments coupled with real-life examples. She focuses on many international examples illustrating the problems created due to water privatization. Given that the author is very-well informed, the readers are swept away with the amount of information mentioned in a fairly thin book. This results in the author going off on a tangent or ending an argument abruptly and brushing over the more important issues she talks about in the book. For example, through the means of only a few concise paragraphs, she mentions about the water conflicts that are projected as ethnic or religious wars between Egypt and Ethiopia as well as Syria and Turkey. Also, about 20% of the book was spent on introducing the book and certain chapters had more talking bits than others. Chapter 5 for instance was nine pages long encompassing a lot of different topics from the shrinking of the Aral Sea to the Indian shrimping industry. She rushes over the more important issues such as untreated wastewater and how Green Revolution resulted in contaminating the groundwater. There are also repetitions across the book of certain information, but her depiction of the environmental impact caused due to the water crisis are verifiable and valid. There is no chronological order to the ideas presented by the author and certain chapters seem longer than others. Subsequently, in the end of the book, there is no overarching summary of her ideas rather she tries to reach out to the readers’ spirituality and presses them to take matters in their own hands. Additionally, she mentions about her personal involvement in assessing the impact of various dams on Narmada, Suvernarekha, Krishna and Kallada rivers, which again was not detailed.
She urges for a return to local and communal control of water to counter the global water crisis. She bases most of her arguments on grassroots efforts happening across India however, today’s India is more divided than ever. Caste, religion, and class issues are prevalent even at the village level even though this was not mentioned in the book. The many aspects touched by the author are agreeably interconnected though they seem scattered rather than organized around a single cohesive argument. It seems as though each chapter has its own message and focus (which they do) making it harder to pin-point one principal focus of the book. She does however successfully demonstrate a range of water topics and links them with globalization, water insecurity and how it affects certain populations of the world more than others.
The author also mentions about the issue of pollution that is causing water scarcity globally. Here, Shiva mentions a valid argument that there was a “shift from control-point discharge regulation to water quality standards” (Shiva, 2016 p. 58). Coming from a toxicology background, one would argue that the water quality standards help pin-point a broad range of contaminants not only for drinking water but also for the survival and biodiversity of various freshwater and marine organisms living in different lakes or rivers. Not to mention, hardness or alkalinity are not the only measures needed for safe water usage and consumption; it must be free of any heavy metals or other toxins that may be present. Shiva blames World Bank, multinational corporations and free trade rules of the WTO for the many ecological and economical disasters that are currently an issue all around the world. Her argument that water is treated as a commodity certainly holds true when it comes to transboundary agreements between countries. On Pg.113, she mentions about how British Columbia banned the export of their freshwater resource to California and how the government of Canada was sued by Sun Belt Water. Needless to say, it illustrates that even though Canada possesses more than 20% of the global freshwater sources, policy making around their own resource is not in their hands (Gordon, 2006). This can be blamed on NAFTA which sees water as a “good” and allows US to sue them since it breaches the protection of investor rights under chapter 11 of the agreement (Gordon, 2006). The legal frameworks that define and lay out the trade agreements bend the words in such manner that natural resources become a prey to commodification. It certainly begs the question whether one can put a price on this basic human right.
Her writing is simple, concise and one of hope. Shiva touches on all aspects of global water issues she is biased towards local efforts. What the author does not realize is implementing those efforts on a bigger scale is challenging. Additionally, she uses many terms in local Indian languages which may not identify well with readers who do not know much about the country geographically, nevertheless it leaves the reader wanting more. Supplemental to her writing, the author provides drawings depicting local people using water resources and a list of different names of the Ganges river. Most of her references are not primary rather they are referenced to her own texts or personal conversations with others. These refer to paragraphs that contain hard statistics such as ones that pertain to annual rainfall amounts, acres of land submerged by dams etc.
Water Wars is a call to action and leaves the readers informed. I would recommend this read to anyone who would like to engage and understand the different aspects and connections that threaten our future supply of water. The book however lacks concrete solutions to the multitude of issues outlined. Her assertions against privatization of water and support for a democratic, community management are certainly applicable in this age.
References
Gordon, Scott, 2006. Canada’s Fresh Water and NAFTA: Clearing the Muddied Waters. Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies, Vol 15, pp. 73, 85–88
Shiva, Vandana (2016 Second Edition) Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, California
